Erstwhile mechanical engineer and Forbes Executive Editor, with MBA from NYU. In 15 years at Forbes I covered large corporations, money managers and self-made wealth builders---and the myriad trials they all face. Joined the tech-startup ranks in 2014 as co-founder and CFO of Eyes/Only, a luxury-experience portal for high-net-worth individuals. If the mood strikes (and especially if you have a tasty-tequila rec), please send your thoughts to brett@eyeson.ly.

The Billionaire Business Owner's Playbook

Forbes: Even billionaires need some help now and again. Some perspective.

Mathile: Absolutely.

Forbes: And probably more than most, because I would imagine life has informed you that you’re right more often than you’re wrong.

Mathile: That’s right.

Forbes: Whom do you look to for perspective?

Mathile: Number one’s my wife. Now I’ve been married 49, going on 50 years, and I got lucky the first time. She’s been my soul mate for more than that period of time. I value her judgment and her perspective. And she’s one of these people that will absolutely tell you the truth, whether you like it or not.

Forbes: How often are you wrong?

Mathile: Most of the time. So she’s certainly one. We have a marvelous staff here at Aileron. I listen to them. We have an outside board. And I still have some friends and mentors that have been around. Most of them are getting pretty old, as I am.

I ask a lot of questions. I’m curious. I believe I have a lot to learn. And I’ve been fortunate. I’ve been sort of a self-educated man in many senses over my life. I look at education as a continuum and something hopefully I’ll be able to do until the guy upstairs calls me.

Forbes: Let’s talk about passion for a second, the thing that keeps you working 16 hours a day, which so many entrepreneurs I speak with do, sometimes to the detriment of everything in their life. They are passionate about their business, which leads to the question. Why pet products for you? What was it that drove you?

Mathile: It was an opportunity. When I scratched the surface, what Paul Iams had was amazing technology. It was so amazing that you could feed his food to a dog and that dog would be transformed. Not just changed—transformed over a short period of time, four to six weeks. And I felt it, because I had been a farmer. I’d fed cattle and I’d never seen the results of nutrition the way his product changed the condition of the dog. And it happened to be my father’s dog.

So that was it. It was pet food. Could it have been another product? Easily could have been another product. It so happens though that to a farm boy, being in the food business, there was alignment.

Forbes: Did the demand [for the product], that affirmation, stoke your passion?

Mathile: There wasn’t a lot of demand at first. I tell people, it took me five years to figure out I had a product that dogs wouldn’t eat and the package consumers wouldn’t buy.

Forbes: So passion got you through the first five years, because you knew.

Mathile: And it also drove me to the next five, when is I had to change [what we had]. I had to change the form of the product, make it more appealing to the pet. And I had to put it in a package that was consumer-friendly. It took us five years. We totally transformed the way we processed the product, what it looked like, how it was packaged, and ultimately how we went to market.

Going Beyond Yourself

Forbes: Let’s talk about habits of successful people. Very successful people in business read voraciously. I don’t know how they find time to do it, honestly. If entrepreneurs had to read three things tomorrow. What would you tell them to read, aside from the Aileron playbook?

Mathile: I think I’d put them in categories: One, biographies of successful people. Two, something to do with a thought, but not a theoretical one. Michael Porter’s [stuff on] sustainable competitive advantage; Al Ries on brand positioning. Peter Drucker, in the area of management.

And then I think about inspirational books that cause people to go beyond themselves. I read books on Churchill, on Margaret Thatcher. Not only political figures, but about Einstein and some of the things that he did and why he did them. Generals like Eisenhower. I read books about people who struggle. Because entrepreneurs are always struggling. Talking with people and learning how they dealt with it is even more important than reading about people who have been very successful.

Forbes: What words of inspiration would you have for our viewers to help them go beyond themselves?

Mathile: If you have a great product or service you believe in, don’t give up. Don’t ever give up. Just keep going, fighting, scratching. It’s going to be tough. It’s going to be the hardest thing you ever did. But it’s one of the most rewarding things that I’ve ever done in my life.

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